


Ask Claire

by jat_sapphire



Category: The Professionals
Genre: I do proofread though, M/M, Not Beta Read, Post-Canon, Re-envisioned Claire from Mixed Doubles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-06-09 08:47:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15263781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jat_sapphire/pseuds/jat_sapphire
Summary: Outliving and remembering.





	Ask Claire

When Bodie opened the street door and saw Claire standing there, his first reaction was rage.

All these last few days, since he'd stormed out of the hospital, abandoning what Doyle had left behind, everything he looked at was tinted like blood-laced water. He felt as though he could never breathe in deeply enough, as though everyone around him spoke in a foolish gabble, as though the city was depopulated even when he walked in crowds. He couldn't bear to handle a gun. Thinking of food made him sick. He couldn't sleep.

Unpredictably, a hot arrow of pain went through his torso. Something was pressing on the backs of his eyes. His hands were cold.

Now, he realized the door buzzer had been going on for some time. Why that reached him when the phone and the RT hadn't made him give a damn enough to touch them, he didn't know.

And there she was, the bird Ray had wanted to tell … something … when they'd both thought it might be their last op. When it wasn't, what had he told her, that bitch? That Bodie didn't know?

She flinched back and nearly fell off the stoop. He knew what she was seeing. He'd worked too long, years ago, at his merc face to be unaware of its effect.

But when he didn't actually strike, she visibly took her courage in her hands. “Hello, Bodie.” And then, when he neither moved nor spoke, “I'm so sorry.” There was no non-violent answer to that. She looked down, then up again and said, “But I need to talk to you. Ray told me.”

At the name, he stepped back, as she had, and for too much the same reason.

She came in. Silently, he took her up to the flat, led her inside, and stood in the middle of the room. The smooth brown cap of her hair, the autumn-rust colour of her prim little suit, the fingers unquiet on her handbag, somehow made him feel less like grabbing the scruff of her neck and shaking her until she was a broken puppet he could toss aside. When she sat in the armchair, knees and elbows clamped rigidly, he watched her, and that weight behind his eyes felt heavier.

The last sound he had heard from Ray's lips was, “Ask Claire,” in that slurred voice. He'd had absolutely no intention of asking her for the time of day and could scarcely force himself to remember it.

Now she opened her mouth and closed it twice before she managed to speak. “Ray was family to me,” she said, and her voice trembled. “He was—” she inhaled sharply, pressed her lips together, and fumbled with her bag until she pulled out a handkerchief, dabbing her eyes as if she were any sad bird thinking of anyone she'd known. What rose in him felt like lava, and she seemed to know, because she went on in a rush, “Never mind about that. He made me his executor. He left you everything.”

The weight was on his chest now, too. He swung with all his strength, and it turned him back toward the door, just missing the woodwork and crashing into the wall under a framed watercolour Ray had hung there not two weeks ago. The impact made it jump off its hook and he watched it glance off his wrist, fall, and smash with no feeling at all. He punched the wall again and hardly felt the physical pain either.

A touch on his arm made him whirl toward her, and she took two steps back. He showed the tips of his teeth, and she went back to the chair, cowed. But it didn't stop her talking.

“He didn't tell me much about your work. But he did say that it was dangerous and that you all had letters on file, to family and so forth. He didn't want to leave yours there.”

What was she talking about? Cowley had given him the envelope. He hadn't opened it.

“He said you wouldn't read it anyway.”

That sodding bastard knew him too well. It was the first thing that he'd found amusing since … but he couldn't let it, couldn't lift the weight in his lungs with a deeper breath, could not. Could not.

From her handbag, she took a pale thing, not business envelope shaped. “I—I don't know whether you'll read this either. I don't really know you at all, just what he said about you, and, and, well.” She held it out. He didn’t take it.

Glancing over her shoulder, she stood and walked to the kitchenette pass-through to put the thing down. There, on the spot where Ray had put his keys, where he’d picked them up and jingled them, mock-sternly saying, “Soonest begun …”

Stabbed again, he was frozen, struggling with himself. He ought to thank her, though he felt no gratitude. He ought to speak, anyway, but his throat was closed.

She reached out as if to touch his arm again, but stopped short. After an awkward moment, her hand fell to her side, and she said, “I’ll be going now.” He nodded. She walked around him and out of the flat.

Bodie heard the little clicks of her heels in the hall, down the stairs, to the street door, and the sound of it opening and shutting. He stood in the centre of a vast silence as the pressure grew, as if it were curling around him to crush him, and though there was some comfort in the image, he took one step and then another, and found himself with the small square envelope in his hand. It was the size and shape of an invitation to an informal party. He wondered if Ray had planned it that way, or whether he’d written it at Claire’s place and the paper was hers.

He thought of crumpling it in his fist but realised he wanted to know what it said, so he carried it to the lounge and sat down, staring at it. Eventually he tore up the flap. Two cards fell out. The smaller had only a phone number on it, but the other—Ray’s handwriting lanced through him. 

“Know this: you were all my life. Ray”

He felt the crack: the weight, the wall, crumbled and fell, and he could not catch it, wrap it around himself, let it smother him. Air came in and filled his lungs, and then again. 

“Ray! _Ray_.” He put his hands over his eyes and did not drop them until the flat was dark around him.

In that darkness, he saw the light in their bedroom before the alarm, when he’d put the pillow on his head and Ray had poked his ribs and bitten at his shoulder. “Up, up, up!” Laughter in his voice and his fingers snaking beneath Bodie’s hip to tease until he could bear no more, surged up and onto the mad berk, smiled into his tilted eyes and kissed his morning mouth. 

He saw Ray with sweaty chest-hair glinting in the sun and hairy thigh muscles tensing and relaxing in the shadow, bucking and writhing in Bodie’s hands until he went off like a firework, spraying Bodie’s chest and chin.

He saw what he had not turned to look at: Ray in the passenger seat of the Capri, one knee up and his elbow on it, gesturing with his fingers and talking, every pointed glance at Bodie twitching at his attention as if he’d been a fish and Ray the angler. The sun edged him, lit him like a lamp. 

Later, in that bloody warehouse, Ray stood at a dirty window, peering out at the spot where the grubby little informant had said the drug sale was supposed to happen, frost-grey light giving Bodie a glimpse of how age would take the brown from all his hair.

A _lying_ glimpse.

Bodie stood, so desperate to hit something that his fists came down on his own head, but there was no comfort in it.

_All your life, Ray? What’s your life now?_

_What's left of mine?_

Pressure on his teeth made him realize he was grinding them, hard. He had to move. Pulling his jacket from its hook, he left the flat, hardly remembering to set the locks.

Sometime since Claire had gone, it had rained. The pavement was varnished, reflecting the street lights and the smudges of yellow from people's windows. Cars hissed in the street. Shadowy, unreal figures gave him a wide berth, and Bodie was grimly satisfied that his merc face was still on. He moved through bitter air, walking fast. A shark in the night, he longed to catch someone, anyone, double-parking, trying to lift a wallet, fighting outside a pub, or better yet setting a bomb or trying to kidnap a diplomat. He'd fix them.

He didn't have his gun, of course. Not necessary, not what he wanted anyway, when his muscles burned to be used, to feel flesh give and bones crack. Peering down an alley where the reflections of a safety light looked even dirtier than the ones in the street, Bodie saw furtive movement at shoulder height and felt greedy and glad, strong and lethal, weightless as he glided along the black brick wall.

“You know what they made of me, don't you? Do you know what they've made of us?"

He heard it, _heard_ it at his ear as though Ray had leaned close. Bodie was so outraged that he shouted aloud, at Ray or at his own traitorous sanity or at the ridiculous cruelty of the universe, “ _No_ , this is not Wuthering Fucking Heights!” Ahead, the creeper startled and ran unguardedly under the safety light. He was a scrawny gangling creature with mud-brown hair, who would have been a disappointment to beat up. 

Thrusting his fists into pockets, Bodie whirled around and went back to the street, walking as if he had an appointment he was late for. He kept going as the streets dried and darkness faded slowly into fog, then mist, then a nauseous slate-coloured dawn.

When he reached CI5 Headquarters, Betty was already at her desk. She looked him up and down and lifted the handset. “Bodie,” was all she said before nodding him through.

Cowley was standing behind his desk, looking down at a file. He didn't move, just looked through the top of his glasses. “Bodie.” His voice was neutral.

At least the Cow wasn't going to say he was _sorry for Bodie's loss_. Not his style at all. And in any case, Bodie had a half-memory of shouting and pounding something and most likely calling names the last time he'd talked to his boss. And Cowley was probably angry about those days he didn't respond to the phone or RT.

“Sir.”

Another second, or five, of silence passed before Cowley said, “Are you reporting for duty? Now?”

“I—” This had seemed simpler on the way here. “I need training. Refreshing.”

Cowley looked back at the file papers and moved one from right to left, then to the centre. He touched it with his index finger, glared up at Bodie in an almost normal way, then tapped all his fingertips on the desk five or six times. “You're volunteering to work with Macklin. Are you.”

“Yes.” Perhaps some of his rage and desperation were coming through. Cowley had never had trouble looking past the merc face.

The set mouth relaxed a little. “Lad, they'll take you apart."

Bodie began, “That's what—” and didn't finish _I want_ or _I deserve_ because he didn't think that, did he? He was going to take Macklin apart, was what he meant to do.

“You don't look up to it.”

He wanted to roar and hit the desk, and maybe Cowley. But then he wouldn't get what he wanted. Knowing he didn't sound even a little respectful, he ground out, “All the more reason.”

After a moment with his head tilted to one side, Cowley said, “That may be so. All right. I'll let Macklin know. Come back tomorrow, eight sharp. Sharp, mind you.”

A day, an entire day to get through before some wholesome punching. Bodie didn't know where to go instead. He knew Cowley could see his hesitation.

“Lewis, Anson and Stuart are over there now. If you like, you could go spar with one of them.”

Real gratitude swept top to toe like a bucket of water over his head. “Thank you, sir.”

The feeling didn't survive being thrown to the floor by Anson, _Anson_ of all people, in the first minute of their bout. The gratitude fell off like a bulletproof vest, and he bounced up renewed. He fought as he'd fought with Krivas at the end, as he'd fought with thugs who tried to get at him and Ray, as he'd fought in mercenary training, all his weapons, all his body, knife and teeth and a plywood box he grabbed and ignored whatever was falling around inside it to bring it down on Anson's head, until he fell on his arse and looked up po-faced.

Macklin was watching in that scornful way he had, hands on hips. “Remembered yourself at last?” he said. “Eat some eggs, Anson, and then it's your turn with Towser. He's got an exercise that I think you'll find … challenging.” Anson put his head in his hands, but knew as well as any of them that there was no escape. He scrambled to his feet and went off.

Then it was Bodie's turn. He squared his shoulders and glared. Macklin looked him up and down. Bodie decided that he'd go for the base of his neck, try to collapse the oesophagus if he said even a word about Ray. Any word.

“Tomorrow,” said Macklin thoughtfully, “I'll have you with Towser. He needs an assistant, and you look ripe for knocking agents around so it really hurts.”

Bodie could hardly believe his ears. He wasn't going to thank the bastard, anyway. “Ripe, but am I ready?"

“Of course not. But Towser and I will see to that.”

That night, Bodie actually slept. Not well, and only between 2:00 and 5:00 or so, but he missed the dawn, and the last time he'd … it was an improvement on recent nights, anyway. 

But then there was a newspaper in his inbox, turned and folded to show obituaries, Ray's obituary, _Ray's fucking obituary_ , full of information that was in his CI5 file but Bodie hadn't bothered to memorise that time he stole a look all those years ago. The identity stuff he knew, the date and cause of death, names of schools, what must be Cowley's part about service to his country, and then survived by his _mother_ , for Christ's sake, where the hell had she been, and Claire's parents and Claire, and _his own name_. Who had written it? Who had given it to him, put it here in his box, as if he were going to cut it out and put it in some sort of scrapbook? Instead he crumpled it up and trod on it before tossing it in the waste bin. Back to Macklin and Towser.

Time passed as if spilled from a paint can, messy and unmeasured. He was ruthlessly bounced around, punched, cut, chased, and shot at for as many hours as he could take it, and then ate Towser's wretched scrambled eggs and took some more. He could hardly climb the flight of stairs to his flat in the evening, and was so drowned in fatigue that it took him days to notice that he had begun to sleep through the night, in his and Ray's real bed, blank black sleep without dreams, and even longer to realize that whole hours passed when he didn't want to kill anyone but Towser. Perhaps not even him. His aches were all from training except when he caught sight of Ray's note, which he had never put away, a little island of grief in the middle of the coffee table, with Claire's number lying next to it to offset the desolation with jealous anger. How dare her number have been in the envelope, as if she had a place in Ray's and his mobile ghetto. As if they made some sort of horrible _family_ , when really Ray belonged only to him.

He came home to mail from a probate solicitor. Laying it gently over Claire's phone number, he did nothing else with it. Walking through the sitting room (he hardly ever sat there any more), he felt it grinning, as if planning to take a bite out of him. It did: every time a frisson of dark meaninglessness stole his breath, he felt a new piece of himself had been broken off, swallowed up.

Then the haunting began.

Sparring with Murphy, he saw Ray in his peripheral vision, running past in that sleeveless red shirt he'd worn for training for the Parsali op. The way he moved was unmistakeable. Bodie's head turned involuntarily, but all he saw was Lewis. Murphy laughed, saying, "You won't get me with that old chestnut!" and leapt at him.

Macklin rushed him in knife practice, and when he jumped back a little awkwardly, Ray's hands, absolutely Ray's, caught and steadied him, firm and solid. He whirled around to see, of course, nothing, and then back. "Am I boring you, Bodie?" asked Macklin, eyes narrowed. "No? Then keep your mind on it and try again."

Another day on the way home, there was no reason to look at the empty passenger seat, and he didn't as he drove out of the lot, down the street, feeling the warmth and presence that he used to take for granted. During a left turn, he let his eyes look farther than needed, even though he knew nothing was there. Yet he felt Ray.

He woke with the taste of Ray on his tongue. How many days had begun that way, their arms round each other and their breath on each other's skins? Now he lay with his own arm over his eyes, breathing through the impossible pain. Like an amputee with phantom feeling in the missing limb.

And yet no actual phantom. He began to feel some empathy for Heathcliff, the nutter. Or Auden: “Stop all the clocks…”

At last he did dream, not of Ray as some malevolent child ghost, not of Ray happy and sexy and funny, not even of Ray scowling and short-tempered. Bodie was in a warehouse, knowing Ray was there somewhere, wounded, cornered, but where? He ran down the centre aisle, darted into alcoves, ran up and down stairs, looked in closets, shouted down holes in the floor, and sometimes heard a call or a moan, but he never found his partner. He woke irritable. Not even in his sleep could he actually get back to Ray.

That day the training bouts were particularly vicious, until Macklin said, “You’re getting there. Remember I said once you hadn’t enough hate? You’re close now.”

This time there was no hallucinatory voice, but Bodie remembered Ray’s eyes and his pain when he said, “Do you know what they've made of us?” He shuddered once, then rubbed the back of his neck to cover the reaction. He didn’t think he’d fooled Macklin.

In his flat, he stared down at the solicitor’s letter. Lifted it as carefully as if it had been a snake, then set it aside still unopened to get the card with Claire’s number. His hands shook as he dialled it. “Hello, Claire?” He couldn’t make his voice sound anything but angry.

“Bodie?” she asked, clearly shocked.

He rushed into it: “I want to donate the inheritance to that sports club of his in Limehouse. Can I do that directly?”

“You’ll have to speak to the solicitor, I think.”

He really did not want to.

Eventually, she said, “Or perhaps I could take care of it."

He took a long breath of relief and forced himself to thank her. However, he also found himself agreeing to see her, a task almost as distasteful as dealing with the legacy.

They met at a teashop, and he walked restlessly back and forth in front of the door until he saw her coming. Then he nodded a greeting and followed her into the shop and to a table, the silence falling over him again. She ordered tea. Her folded hands on the tabletop seemed to demand a response he could no longer give. All his life, since he’d run away from home at fourteen, he’d been honing his charm, approaching girls and then women, getting what he wanted and giving back little or nothing. It had been like a shell he wore, and now it was stripped away. He felt like a sea creature lost and drying out on the beach. All he could do was to wait for her to begin.

She seemed much more self-possessed than when she’d come to his flat, even though she could hardly make whole sentences: “Look, first. You, were you, did you think I was Ray's, did you think we were _seeing each other_?”

He stared. Of course he had—thought they were fucking, actually, and then at Venue Two he'd thought Ray wanted to marry her, or thought he was in love or some such shite.

He couldn't quite say that. He didn't know what to say, and then he said it anyway, fiercely. “What was he to you?”

“My foster brother.”

That couldn't be true, could it? What had Ray said that night in Venue Two? That he'd wanted to see her, talk to her, that she’d had night shift that week. And before that, when he'd mentioned her … that night he couldn't have dinner because he had, yes, he'd said _a date_ with Claire. And the next morning, when Bodie tried to start their usual rag, Ray had said, “I didn't get my leg over, if that's what you meant,” with distaste, the way he'd talked about Ann, like a lover. Wasn't it that? And then was _meeting_ Claire instead of coming to the pub. The bastard, why hint like that? Why not tell Bodie later, when they'd been—when he'd all but moved into the flat? “Why didn't he say?” Bodie's voice was gravelly. His throat hurt.

Claire lifted one hand, then put it back on the other one. “I had the impression you didn't talk about past or family much.”

Eventually, Bodie choked out, “No.”

“You might not know, then, that he went into care after, well, his cheek surgery. And my parents took him in.”

“He only said he was a tearaway.” For a moment, the whole conversation, that long night, came back to Bodie, and he smelled the gun oil and saw Ray's profile, as he cleaned his weapon and talked, the faint self-satisfaction under what he seemed to think was some kind of confession. “He said he did all kinds of things,” _cut up another kid when I was just a kid meself,_ “and never got caught.”

“True enough,” she said. “My parents thought he was a terrible influence. I thought he was … a hero.”

Bodie could only shake his head.

“I came to London to take a nursing position because I knew he was here. For a couple of years we just sent cards, made a few dates for coffee, but he stood me up as often as he came.”

Even she was talking about it as if it had been an affair.

If he were being honest, though, it was oddly like the way he and Ray had talked about their own … _affair_ , made it sound like mates sharing a fishing holiday or getting a meal because it was convenient and not because they couldn't stay away from each other, needed to be close to breathe easily—Bodie, anyway, needed Ray's touch like food.

“CI5 takes all your time,” he told Claire now. “I missed about half my dates too.”

“I think he probably only had time for me at all because he wasn't dating, or less and less. He only talked about you.”

“He can’t have.” Even after they'd admitted they loved each other, they'd lived like fugitives, as if their flats were safe houses and spies were after them. Every conversation in the outside world was coded. Every word about themselves, more or less a lie. Even to each other, then, when Ray mentioned Claire, and what else had he hidden? How could Bodie have been Ray's whole life when his whole life was a web of prevarication?

She was speaking, with a kind of simple certainty that made him feel as if she had known another Ray in another world. “He did. Oh, not what you did together at work, or, or other time you spent together, but how you played jokes on him and bets you had and so forth. That you love Swiss roll. Once,” and she smiled reminiscently, “he brought me a box of chocolates, the kind with soft centres. They were supposed to be a birthday gift for me, but he told me that they reminded him of you, because you seemed tough but really were soft inside.”

But that was _their_ joke, Ray’s and his. Their own. Had they, had Bodie, never had anything that was just their own?

“I'm taking Ray's word for that 'softie' part.” She gave him a level, sceptical look. “I’m here because there were things Ray wanted you to know, if he couldn't, when he couldn't—” Her voice broke. She sheltered her eyes with one hand, as if the light were too bright, until the tea came. Then she cleared her throat and said, “I’ll be Mother, shall I?”

She made his tea just as he liked it, which spurred him to say harshly, “ _This_ is what he wanted me to know?"

“No. Not really. I was to tell you, well, that he loved you. Two great macho creatures, the two of you, did you ever say it? In fact I believe his actual words were 'he was the person I thought of most.'” She paused, shaking her head. “He said he felt like a coward not to have spoken to you directly—that you’d know when he meant. He was afraid for you all the time, afraid your time was too short.”

“It was,” he said. They were silent after that, drinking tea. He felt like an empty teacup, open to view but hollow. Better than endless rage, he supposed. More peaceful, anyway. _Remember what peace there may be in silence_ , he thought, in Cowley's voice, the way he'd read it while they were searching Ray’s old flat, when he was in hospital because that crazy Chinese girl shot him. Ray had recovered from that. Eventually, when the doctors said he had decided to live. Why hadn’t he decided to recover again?

Claire leant her head a little to one side and said, “Bodie, may I ask you something?” He met her eyes but did not answer. “Will you tell me what really happened?"

How could he refuse, even though it was like coughing up broken glass even to speak Ray's name? And while he told the story, the warehouse rose around him again, and he could smell the dust and hear the desperate hunt.

The drug dealers in their bespoke suits took shelter with two of the bodyguards, while the other two heavy-set men hunted for him and Ray, who were waiting for backup and creating a diversion when it did arrive. They weren't in sight of each other, but Bodie knew where Ray was, of course, as he knew where his own arms and legs were, where his gun was when he drew it. He'd shot the smaller guard, heard the brutal music of the backup's firefight begin, and then saw the bigger one edge along the wall, a few steps from Ray's hide. Bodie yelled, “4.5! Go!” to send him up the metal staircase that led to the service gallery. A better view and an immediate escape. But he didn't hear the clanging steps or the return fire when the big bastard abandoned stealth and shot at Bodie.

While he dodged around boxes and shelving and the back of a forklift, Bodie got angrier and angrier. He shot the gunman and reached the foot of the staircase without hearing a shift or a whisper. There Ray was at last, crouched oddly, shoulder and head against the wall as if having a quick kip.

“What the hell's the matter with you?”

Ray didn't move.

Bodie ran to him. “Did he get you? Are you wounded?” He took Ray by the shoulder, turned him, and saw half his face slack and blank, the other half a rictus of horror and rage. “Ray!” The angry eye met his, and both filled with tears. Bodie, unable even to think about what was happening, scooped him from the floor and, gasping with the weight, ran straight out of the building to the backup. And the ambulance. 

Now, in the teashop, Claire said slowly, as if it were incredible to her too, “That’s what they told me, the hospital staff. A stroke. How could Ray of all people have a stroke?”

That day, Cowley had said, “Och, yes, it's in his file. His father died of it when he was only twelve. Though that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”

“I didn’t believe it either,” Bodie told Claire, his mouth bent in a curve like a smile even while his face was stiff. “With all that healthy eating, watching his cholesterol! And mine.”

“He probably—” Claire gulped, took a sip of her tea, and then stirred it a few times.

While a little curious, Bodie decided he didn't want to know if she'd meant something that was supposed to be comforting, because none of that shite ever was.

But then she said, “He probably never thought about it. He _liked_ salads and vegetables. He liked teasing you.”

That was about the end of the visit, and afterwards he couldn't stop thinking of what they'd said, over and over during every break in the working day. Every time, it left him hollow, not the sea creature but the dead shell. Then he went back to pounding and being pounded, which did distract as well as exhaust him.

A few days after, at Macklin's, he took on Anson and Stuart together because they were supposed to be teamed for an op, and beat them almost as handily as Barry Martin used to beat him and Ray. It certainly wasn't because they thought he was better than they were. It was … he realised what was the matter. “You're not partnering,” he told them. “You're too far apart. You don't know where the other one is, what he's going to do.”

“We're not you and Doyle,” Stuart answered, snidely.

“Nobody's Doyle,” he snapped. “That doesn't mean you stand there and watch while I'm taking Anson apart. _Protect_ him. Here, move a step forward. And Anson, shove over there.” Now when they began again, Bodie could see they were more aware of each other. “Do the course together. Run together. You're a team.”

“Bisto kids,” Anson panted, but seemed earnest enough.

A week later, Anson was faster because he was running more and cutting down on his cigars. Stuart was working on marksmanship. They were becoming teammates. And Bodie dreamed of Ray. 

First, he was floating, trying to stay in the air because whenever he stopped trying, he sank toward the ground, a lava field that exhaled heat greater than the harshest desert sun. He moved his arms as if swimming and rose about a body-length further. Ray was above him. His hair shone and so did the white he wore. His face was smooth and kind, wisdom in his eyes and a faint smile on his lips. He looked like an icon.

Bodie woke desolate. His happiness in the dream made him want only to sleep again, swim up the air to Ray, stay in that hot glow. He closed his eyes and felt sick with longing ... sick, as if he'd eaten two big Swiss rolls and too much fried bread and fish and chips.

His real Ray, the one who had found dying easier the second time, had not been flawlessly beautiful. He would have laughed at that Christmas-angel image. Bodie smiled, remembering the changeling toad-face Ray wore sometimes, when he was too sleepy or just being a bastard. He yelled and punched things when he was frustrated, not caring much whether the people he yelled at were the ones to frustrate him, caring not at all whose objects he was hitting or kicking. In verbal fights, he hit below the belt, with the nastiest jabs he could think up ... and he took the return blows, just as he had in physical fights. 

That last quarrel, now, what had it been about? Probably mess in Bodie’s flat, that was a common one. Or no, it had started about mess in _Ray’s_ flat, in the kitchen, which had been Bodie’s fault, and then spread somehow to their running schedule and Bodie’s laziness, taking in their driving habits in the CI5 cars and Bodie’s mercenary past.

“Just lying round under palm trees in between gun-running trips, I suppose,” Ray said venomously.

Bodie rolled his eyes. “Well, you know all about that.”

“What d’ya mean by that?” Ray’s fists were clenched.

For once, Bodie was willing to tell him, though it certainly hadn’t been for the first time. “I mean,” he said as he stalked closer, as Ray held his ground, “you’re perfectly willing to judge without having a _single_ ,” now they were only inches apart and he was looking down the narrow difference in their heights, “ _solitary_ ,” but Ray never backed down, and now his teeth were showing, “ _fact_ to support your fantasies about my past.”

“You’ve never told me a single solitary fact!”

Hardly ever could Bodie keep being angry as long as Ray could. He’d run out of steam already and just felt tired. “I have, actually,” he said, “but you don’t remember them. Especially when you’re having a tantrum like this. Christ, you’re a stroppy bastard. I said I’d clean the sodding kitchen, and if you hadn’t been trying so hard to flay me with your tongue, it’d be done by now.”

They glared at each other for a while, their expressions gradually dimming and then rekindling into small smiles. “I suppose that’s true,” Ray said at last, not specifying what exactly “that” was. Close enough, Bodie decided, and moved toward the kitchen to clean the pans and the sauce dribbled on the counter, and that little pile of vegetable peels and seeds he’d left when chopping them. Ray dried the dishes after Bodie washed them, and then they’d gone on a run, and then to Bodie’s to finish setting up the queen bed and spend the night. 

He’d take the fights, he’d take every cut of Ray’s tongue, if only …. Life in a word, he’d told Ray. He hadn’t realized how much “if” was death in a word, too. A land-mine of a word.

The morning after the dream, Macklin told him not to change into gym clothes because Cowley wanted to see him, so he tightened his windsor knot and went.

"Ah, 3.7," Cowley said. "I'd like you to go over the latest shipment of weapons."

"Is there a problem?"

"There should be none. But see what you think."

Now there was a typically Cowley answer. Bodie just said, "Yes, sir," and went down to the armoury.

He took the day at it. Cowley had made him suspicious, so he opened each packing-case and checked all the manifests. And found the fragmentary grenades, with their claws on one end and unnecessarily brassy casing, took one and dismantled it.

Reporting to Cowley the next morning, he went through the types of armament and ammunition that were in the crates, until last of all, when he said, “—and the fragmentary grenades. I’ve not known us to use anything like that, sir. Did you order them?”

“Not to say order them specifically, no,” Cowley said. “Do you recommend their use? Are there appropriate circumstances for us to use them?”

“Not to my knowledge,” Bodie said carefully. “I don’t recommend them, and of course they’re against Rule 79 of Protocol 1.”

“Illegal, then?”

Bodie was certain Cowley knew, but he explained docilely enough. “I investigated what fragments these use, and they’re not glass, they’re plastic. Here in the UK, only glass fragments are illegal. Still, they have the same effect: they injure anyone in range, and the fragments are undetectable by X-ray.”

“Criminals may be using them.”

“Yes, they’re ideal terrorism weapons. I didn’t think we were likely to want to injure or kill civilians as well as whomever we’re hunting.”

Cowley looked dissatisfied, or perhaps cross about the nearly cheeky tone Bodie had used. After a pause, he said, “Doyle’s influence?"

That irritated Bodie. “What, to not kill civilians? Not want to kill civilians?”

Cowley did not answer, just stared.

“Doyle’s objections would have been moral and ethical, more about Geneva codes, roses and lavender. Mine are mostly practical. How would we use these without risking injury to our own people? Would CI5 be able to sustain the questions MPs would raise about such weapons? Altogether, sir, I don’t see how the benefits are worth the risks.”

At last, Cowley nodded. “Thank you, Bodie, I’ll take what you say under advisement.”

That had clearly been some kind of test, but Bodie didn’t understand what the test was for, or whether he had passed or failed. Would it have been better to have talked about right and wrong? Did Cowley want him to be more like Doyle?

Their partnership hadn’t worked that way. It had been Cowley who called them chalk and cheese, who’d made so much of their differences—exaggerated them. But they weren’t fused into a single person, either, even by love. They couldn’t really read each other’s minds.

As Claire said, they hardly even told each other “I love you,” though every day they showed it. Surely Ray hadn’t had any doubt. He couldn’t have wondered, could he?

That uncertainty was what had been in his mind when he’d decided to sneak back into Ray’s hospital room after visiting hours. He’d needed to act as though he were really leaving for the night, which made Ray’s eye widen and his mouth work as if to speak. If anything would have made him absolutely determined to stay in the building, that was it. When the ward quieted and he was able to go back, Ray was startled into making a croaking noise when he saw Bodie step to the side of the bed 

“Hsh,” Bodie soothed him, putting fingertips to his lips, and then kissing over to the numb side and back to the one moving at his touch. Ray opened his mouth, but his tongue was sluggish and the taste was wrong, metallic somehow, medicinal. Still, afterwards Bodie could smile into Ray’s eyes and say honestly, “It’s just something to get used to. Like your stroppy temper and your, and your,” but all at once he couldn’t meet Ray’s expression or speak another word, so he put his head down on the nearer shoulder. Ray’s hand moved unsteadily in his hair, four or five strokes, and he made a frustrated sound as he missed Bodie’s head and hit his ear. “It’s all _right_ ,” Bodie insisted. He kissed Ray again and smiled into his eyes. “I bet I can show you. Will you let me show you?” He waited for the shallow nod before he began arranging the sheet and blanket. He covered as much of Ray as possible but moved the hospital gown out of the way, to stroke and kiss all the skin he’d bared, and slid the incontinence pants down to reveal Ray’s cock. 

“So beautiful, sunshine,” he murmured and meant every word, always had. He began hopefully, kissing from base to tip. Like crushed velvet, Ray’s skin shifted beneath his lips and tongue, and when he took the tip in his mouth, the gasp he heard gave him a rush of familiar arousal. Could have been yesterday. Except yesterday, his randy old toad would have been hard already. It never took much to get Ray going. Now his shivers moved the hospital bed and his hand was patting Bodie’s shoulder, but his cock lay still except as Bodie moved it. Refusing to be discouraged, Bodie took the softness in his hand and stroked, looking at Ray’s face. “Feels good, eh? Feels fine to me.”

“Can’t,” said Ray indistinctly. “Do you.”

“Well, not _now_ ,” Bodie conceded. “But you’ll get better, won’t you? The doctor says all you need is will power, and we know you have that.”

Ray grimaced, baring his teeth as far as he was able. The anger seemed real, and Bodie was taken aback. “Not will,” Ray forced out. “Real in—injus—injur—ree.”

Even knowing Ray could not feel it, Bodie could not stop himself from reaching out, laying his palm on the numb side of Ray’s face, cupping the unmoving skin. “Of course it’s real. It’s serious. It’s—” he took hold of his courage— “it’s scaring me to death, if you must know. But you’re alive. We’re here together. Just try, please.”

Though his frown eased, Ray did not speak, and his level gaze did not reveal his thoughts.

Bodie covered him again, carefully, pants and gown and sheet and blanket, smoothing each layer; he ended with his hand on the top of Ray's head and his face in the curly hair, breathing Ray's scent and beating down waves of desolation. “I'll come back tomorrow.”

Ray made a sound that might have been meant to be “love.”

Thumbing Ray's cheekbone, Bodie said as easily as he could, “That's right.” He hoped that was enough.

At the door, though, Bodie saw Ray make a visible effort to say, “Ask Claire.”

“What? What d'you mean 'Ask Claire'?” Bodie strode back to the bed and gripped the railing.

Ray closed his eyes.

It took only a few breaths for Bodie to give in. “You need your sleep, don't you? Rest now.” At the door again, unsure whether Ray was even still awake, Bodie made an effort: “'Night, love."

Reaching the flat in a haze of fatigue and misery, Bodie still couldn't think of sleeping. Everything reminded him, and how not? They'd had sex up against every vertical and on top of every horizontal surface in the place except the cooker. And as for the bed …

It was queen-size, which both of them had made endless jokes about, and when they'd first set it up, it seemed to take up the whole bedroom. “We'll have to put our shoes out on the balcony,” Ray said with a curl of the lips.

“But our feet won't hang off the end,” Bodie answered. The bed frame in Bodie's previous CI5 flat had been pre-war and the mattress almost as old, not large enough in any dimension.

Ray cast Bodie a sideways look. “Half the time one of us has legs over the other's shoulders anyway.”

“Now's a fine time to tell me you preferred the old bed.” Bodie grinned. “Or is this one just—untested? We can fix that, you know.”

That wide white smile of Ray's was answer enough to go on with. They stripped, and Bodie cannoned into Ray, who tackled back. They fell onto the mattress with great force, but the bed lived up to the innuendos in its advertising and didn't collapse. They both fit head to foot, too, and even had some spare room as they rolled back and forth, Bodie on top and then Ray. “What do you want?” asked Bodie.

“Everything. The whole menu, soup to nuts.” Ray reached between his own and Bodie's thighs to finger their testicles.

Bodie felt his own breath quicken while his lips stretched in a slow grin. “Nuts first? Unusual. Or what?”

Ray grabbed Bodie's head in both hands, bending for a fierce kiss. “Mmm,” and again, “this first, and—” once more, with even more tongue, “God, Bodie.” He sat up and ran his hands down Bodie's flanks to his knees, then palmed Bodie's chest while working his hips so that his cock and balls dragged along Bodie's. “Your skin under me, your weight on me, the way you taste, the way you feel in me, the way you feel around me. Every. Thing. Everything we do. I'm on fire."

“Come here.” Bodie rolled them again. He knew just what he wanted to do with the wild creature beneath him, so he pushed up and looked for just a moment at the way Ray's cock stood up and wept, the way his hips were still rocking and his stomach muscles clenching. “You _are_ on fire.” He glanced up at Ray's wide, darkened eyes. “Fortunately, old chap, I'm a fire-eater,” and then he slid his mouth over Ray's cock, taking it in until the head touched the back of his throat.

After that hospital visit, as he stood in the bedroom looking down at the smooth, empty sheets, he thought, _We could do that all right. He could lie just there, where he was, and I could kiss and touch him all over, wind him up till I can deep-throat him. If he …_ Bodie stopped himself and turned away.

Sleeping on the lounge, he almost missed the phone call, but he caught it on the seventh ring and then it was lucky he'd slept in his clothes. At the hospital, he wouldn't even wait for the lift, but ran up four flights of stairs.

Murphy was in the hallway in front of Ray's room and would not let Bodie pass. “Leave it, mate.”

“ _Leave_ it! Sod off!” But it wasn't like pushing past Ray, or even Cowley. Murphy's eyes were level with his own, his hands like iron, his whole body a wall. Bodie would have had to fight for real, and angry as he was, he didn't quite want to.

Murphy said evenly, “The doctor'll be out soon,” but if that was supposed to be reassuring, it wasn't a good effort. Bodie felt every muscle in his body draw tight. They glared at each other.

The doctor paused in the doorway to stare. Bodie supposed he didn't look like the usual family visitor. She didn't look like an ordinary doctor, either. Very slight, beige-skinned and soft-eyed, she looked more like a school-leaver than a mature medical professional, and he narrowed his eyes as he wondered whether she could possibly know what she was doing. He read her name tag: Aakriti Devi. “Doctor Devi,” he said.

“Sir.” Her voice was high and musical, as cool as wind-chimes.

“I'm told Ray Doyle had … a crisis? May I see him?"

“A crisis? A second stroke. Always the event to fear after any stroke, isn't it?” But as she spoke, more than one voice called from inside the room, and she hurried back in.

“ _Let me see him_!” Murphy let go, and Bodie ran through the door.

How could Ray look smaller in the bed than he had just a few hours ago? But he did, perhaps because of the machines around him, a drug drip and a heart monitor and an EKG and a ventilator. The beeps and whooshes seemed out of rhythm, and the circle of medical staff worked furiously. A steady high tone began, over the other noises. Bodie didn't look at the machines but at the people gradually going still, as still as Ray, including Dr. Devi. He broke through their circle and reached for Ray's cheek, next to the ventilator tube. His eyes were not quite closed, a thin line of white under his eyelashes, as if he were peering past all of them. “Ray,” he said. Cleared his throat. “Ray!” Not even an eyelid fluttered. “Damn it, Ray!”

Cowley's voice rang across the room. “Bodie! Stand down, man!”

That was when he had started really yelling, blaming, shaking the bedrail and pushing the carts, out of his mind at how _wrong_ this all was, how impossible and insane, how Ray must be shamming, just taking the piss, because how could this be the man who had all the life in the world wrapped up in his runner's body, his blazing eyes, his laugh that seemed to come all the way from his balls, that smile wider than anyone else's?

“Get out! Get out!” and it wasn't just Cowley now, it was that little doctor and everyone else in the room except Murphy, who just wrapped both arms around Bodie's chest and dragged him backwards into the corridor. Well, and except Ray, still staring, motionless.

The hospital guards tried to take him from Murphy, but Bodie broke away and ran back down the stairs and right out of the building, the EKG whining in his ear, on and on, that single long note.

In those first days, he'd been in such a fog of pain and anger that he couldn't even clearly imagine Ray’s face or body. It had been terrifying, as if grief were stealing his memory, eroding the past itself. Almost a week before Claire had come to his flat and he'd been able to remember, at least in flashes, glimpses of light.

He'd felt as if other people remembered Ray better than he did, which made him angry and jealous and deranged. That was one reason why, when Cowley spoke to him about a memorial service, he had refused to attend it. The old man let it go, or seemed to, but gave him the day off as punishment. It felt like that. Forbidden to go to the training facilities, he got up early, did some cleaning, organised laundry, changed the sheets. Someone rang the doorbell. He felt angrier every step, thinking it was Cowley wanting him to put up a show for CI5, and that was the last thing he would do, he'd just _tell_ Cowley that. He flung open the street door.

But it wasn't Cowley, it was Claire.

While he was still readjusting, looking farther down, changing the frown on his face, she stepped toward him and poked him in the chest and said, " _Get_ upstairs and _put_ on a tie and _come on_ to the service," with a pretty serious glare and frown of her own.

"No," Bodie growled. 

"Yes! This is _my brother's memorial_ and you were his partner and you are _going_."

She could have been Ray himself in one of his tantrums. Her voice rose just the way his always had. It would have been funny if Ray had been there to share it with. "I'm sorry I'm inconveniencing you, making a piss-up of your pretty arrangements," Bodie snarled.

She scowled. "No, you won't, because you're going. You're expected."

"By who? You? Cowley? His mother? It's not as if Ray'll be there checking off names on some guest list."

She recoiled, then leaned in again and spoke low. "This is my time to remember him, his family and friends' and coworkers' time, and you will _not_ make all the talk and all the memories of it about you. 'Oh, is Bodie here, where is he, didn't he care, what kind of partners—'"

" _Shut up._ " 

"Get your tie."

Again, it was as if he heard Ray's anger, and he couldn't brush that off. He didn't bring her up to the flat, but he did go and change, and when he came back down, she was still on the stoop, her arms folded. She drove, with abrupt, sharp movements of her hands on the wheel and on the manual shift.

She seated him in the front pew. He kept his head down for a while, and almost everyone left him alone. Cowley gave him a cramped little smile, and Ray’s mother tried to make friends. He looked at her blankly, unable to connect her to Ray in any way or to fathom why she thought he’d want to.

She was a bunchy little woman with carefully waved hair in a back-combed puff, who introduced herself as Doris, “Ray’s _real_ mother,” in a lowered voice as if it were a secret she were sharing with him.

He was entirely uncharmed. “Bodie,” he said, and she picked the name up and ran with it.

“I thought you must be Bodie. His partner in that police job, aren’t you? Seems strange that you’re here on the family pew, Bodie, not with the others.”

He would rather have been with Murph and Anson, Jax and even Stuart, if he had to be in this bloody place at all, but all he said was, “Not really police.”

She shrugged, and he thought her indifference to their actual job was entirely predictable from someone who, as far as he knew, had never called, phoned, or visited Ray. Of course the foster parents hadn’t either. Or maybe they had, and Ray’d just kept it to himself.

He looked past Doris and Claire’s family, and realized that there was quite a crowd now. The other pews were full, and people were standing at the sides and the back, with others still coming in. Who on earth were they all? He knew so few of them. Wait, there was Margery Harper, unmistakable in a black-veiled hat like something in a costume drama, dabbing at her eyes with a black lace handkerchief. A motley group of boys stood in a knot near the door, with a man in his twenties keeping an eye on them. Another group of bigger men in motorcycle gear, a number of people Bodie thought were grasses, a scattering of police officers in dress uniform, the CI5 contingent, a few fellows Bodie recognized from the local. Others he couldn’t place.

Instead of a family member speaking first, Cowley opened a dogeared Bible and read, "Wisdom of Solomon, Chapter 3, verses 1 to 7. 'But the souls of the righteous are in the hands of God, and there shall no torment touch them. In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die: and their departure is taken for misery. And their going from us to be utter destruction: but they are in peace. For though they be punished in the sight of men, yet is their hope full of immortality. And having been a little chastised, they shall be greatly rewarded: for God proved and found them worthy for himself. As gold in the funace hath he tried them, and recieved them as a burnt offering. And in the time of their visitation they shall shine, and run to and fro like sparks among the stubble.'"

It would have been nice to believe in that, Bodie thought.

Cowley sat down, and Doris got up. To let her out, Bodie moved out of the pew to the nearest wall, where it was empty, put his shoulders against it and turned his head away from the front.

Doris began, “My Ray was such a beautiful child,” and Bodie tuned her out until her voice was no more than traffic noise, like a klaxon. Margery was sobbing hard, now, and he found himself feeling a bit sorry for her.

Doris finished at last, and Claire got up. She came out the end of the pew where he was standing and put her hand on his arm, as she’d tried to do that very first time they met. “It should be your turn now,” she murmured, and he stared.

“You’re joking.”

“No, Bodie. He’d want it.”

“He’s _gone_. I can’t … I can’t say anything to these people.” And he looked away.

So she went to the lectern herself. “Ray came to live with us when he was ten years old, and I was seven. I was an only child, and having a big brother was the best gift I could imagine having. I followed him everywhere, which must have been a terrible nuisance, but he was good to me. Well, when he wasn’t angry,” and a ripple of low laughter ran through the crowd, “and he also got me into plenty of trouble,” glancing at her mother, who smiled and nodded, “but he protected me from bullies and threatened my first boyfriends,” and the crowd laughed again. She let it die down and then said, "What he taught me above all was to have passion for whatever I did, to run hard and work hard and—and love hard, because he did all that.” She looked at Bodie then and said straight to him, “I think he wouldn’t have changed a thing except he would have wanted to stay longer,” and her voice broke and Bodie had to close his eyes. He stood motionless, feeling the stone wall at the back of his head, hearing the shuffling and then the next speaker beginning: Murphy.

“I’m another of Doyle’s coworkers at CI5,” he began, “and I had the pleasure of working with him whenever he could be pried away from Bodie.” The CI5 people laughed, but Bodie didn’t look either to them or to the lectern. “He was a good mate and great backup. No fear, that man. You never had to look around for him—he was already with you, or in front. Damn’ fast runner. Um, sorry about the damn,” glancing round the church and making the crowd laugh again. “Anyway, we’ll all miss him, especially in the pub when it’s his round,” and after that laugh he stepped down. Bodie opened his eyes but did not leave the wall.

A few more people spoke: the smallest of the boys in back, and one of the others later; one of the coppers talking about Ray's integrity, and Bodie could only shake his head, since admiration from his fellow plods was not what Ray had remembered at all; one of the motorcycle blokes. They spoke of Ray's friendliness, kindness, honesty, skills, generosity—none of it quite untrue. As it all seemed to be winding down, a man who'd been standing near the door where the hymnals were stacked wove through the Limehouse boys and walked up the aisle. Bodie watched him curiously. He looked ordinary enough, a well-made man in his thirties, light brown hair, dressed in a plain polo and jumper and dark trousers, with a small, trim beard and a scar that ran from the corner of one eye down to his jaw.

At the lectern, he looked around at everyone, perfectly at ease, and began, “My name is Ian Cooper, and I expect nobody here knows me. But Ray and I knew each other, years ago in Derby. We were both twelve years old, and we were enemies.” People in the pews shifted uncomfortably, and he smiled and went on. “The way boys are, just spitting and hissing like cats. I don't remember how it started—some argument, some fight, some name, but at one point we couldn't lay eyes on one another without waving fists and jumping each other. And then one day, Ray had a switchblade.”

Bodie stood away from the wall and clenched his fists. The bastard, to do this at Ray's memorial! Only the refusal to make the whole scene worse kept Bodie still.

Cooper still looked totally relaxed, and not at all angry. “Yes, he made this scar—” he touched it with his fingertips— “and I was lucky not to lose the eye. I didn't tell. I had some feeling that it would be cowardly to get Ray in trouble! I was in hospital a few days, under observation, and,” grinning, “Ray came to visit every day. When I got out, we kept spending time together. Except for the scar, I don't think we would have even remembered how much we had once thought we hated each other. And—well, this can't hurt him now—he was my first love.” The way he smiled so widely, the way his eyes were full and his voice was rough, made Bodie's breath catch so that he had to look away again, unwilling to think much of Ian and Ray as young lovers, all those years ago. The gasping breath he took arrowed down his lungs as if it would split him apart. He had relaxed his fists while Cooper was speaking, but had to clench them harder now.

“So, following Miss Claire's lead, I'll say this: I learned from Ray that maybe people change and maybe they don't, but we can change the way they are in our lives. We can make it better. Thank you so much, Ray, and I hope you know how grateful I am.”

When Cooper stepped around the lectern, Claire got up from the pew and took him in a big hug, her head on his shoulder and her face turned toward Bodie, who could see that she was crying. She pulled Cooper by the hand so he sat next to her on the pew, and took his other hand to talk to him, urgent and low.

Then she was turning toward Bodie and beckoning him, and reluctantly, he came to stand beside her. Other people were also moving around and talking to each other, or just leaving, like the Limehouse group. Noise came from the car park, cars starting and motorcycles revving, one after another. Cooper stood up again and spoke politely to Claire and her mother, and then put his arms around Bodie, ignoring how stiffly he stood and how he didn't raise his own arms. Cooper's hug was strong but brief, and then he stepped back, said “Mr Bodie,” and was gone before Bodie could tell him not to say Mister.

The leaves shrank and darkened, scattering from dry branches that could not hold them. These mornings, the streets and cars were rimed with frost, though it faded to nothing in an hour or two after dawn. There’d been one total callout including Bodie, in relation to a terrorism threat for Remembrance Sunday, but the group was neutralized with a minimum of fuss, and Bodie didn’t so much as draw his gun.

He had the actual Sunday off. When he could, he liked to visit the graves of the men from his patrol, at least the ones in London: Trevor, Philpot, Williams. The day was rainy and chilly but not actually cold. As he was getting ready to leave the flat, in the grey leather jacket that kept off most of the rain, he stepped into the bedroom, took Ray’s wristwatch out of the sock drawer where it had been sitting, and brought it along.

Ray had never served in the army, so this day had no particular connection to him, but Bodie had never seen his grave, and this day seemed as good as any. It was in the same graveyard they used to run in, where Bodie had not been since they were last there together. The stones near their route were old, so he had to go to a different part of the cemetery to find Ray’s grave. His headstone was pale and sharp-edged as if it had been set there yesterday, its rough-cut top dark with rainwater. It gave his name and dates, and then “In the sight of the unwise they seem to die.”

He must be unwise, then, Bodie thought angrily, because in his sight Ray was definitely _dead._ Not in the hands of that God he didn’t believe in, not anywhere Bodie would ever rejoin him. He set his hand on the stone, gripping it until he felt the sandy lumps bruising, the edge cutting into his hand, until he could think again.

Cowley must have had the stone cut and put here. Certainly the old man cared about that sort of thing, and he’d chosen the Solomon reading to begin with. He meant well. He believed.

“I believe in _me_ ,” Bodie had told Ray, and he said it again now, alone with his hand on the marble, alone among the dead. He took the wristwatch out of his pocket and looked at the back where he’d had it engraved: “RD from WAPB,” as discreet a message as possible. Ray had lit up like the Christmas tree when he’d unwrapped it.

 _Stop all the clocks_ , he thought, smashed the watch face against the corner of the headstone, then dropped it and strode away without bothering to see where it fell.

On the way back to the flat, collar up and still being gradually drenched from head to foot, Bodie didn’t think any more about the grave but about the first time they had crossed over from mates to lovers. It had been round about this time of year, the end of a bad day when not all the terrorists died but too many innocents did. Doyle’s flat was nearest, and he said he had food in. But when they had the door shut behind them, Ray didn’t seem to remember, just stood, jacket still on, keys still in his hand, frowning at the corner of a throw-rug.

Ray’d had plenty of these dark moments over the years. Bodie had tried telling jokes, getting him to a crowded pub, introducing birds, calling current birds, asking him to dinner, telling him to forget it, reminding him of other deaths, quarrelling, haranguing, letting him talk it to death, clapping him on the shoulder, and leaving him to wallow. None of it had made any difference. Now Bodie couldn’t think of a word to say or any gesture to make, yet his own heart ached and he couldn’t step away, either.

After quite a while, Ray lifted his head and seemed to remember that Bodie was there. Even then, he didn’t speak, just stared, such an expression of confused misery on his face that Bodie lifted his arms. Ray took two steps into them. The leather they both wore creaked and slid, so Bodie said, “Don’t need these, eh?” and peeled off both their jackets. In a moment they were on hooks beside the door, and Ray put his head on Bodie’s shoulder while they held each other again. The little exhalation that brushed across Bodie’s throat said everything. The weight in his arms and Ray’s tight hold around his waist was all he needed.

Ray kissed the spot nearest his mouth, which wasn’t a place Bodie had found sensitive before, but now his breath rushed in, almost a gasp. He put one hand on the side of Ray’s head, feeling his end-of-day stubble, the soft mass of his hair, the curl of his ear. The rush of emotion was much more than he had expected. “Almost like being in love,” Bodie said, and he’d thought he meant to joke, but his own voice surprised him.

“Is it?” Ray said, lips still brushing Bodie’s skin, then chuckled softly. Taking firmer hold of Ray’s head, Bodie bent his own and kissed him, a smack for joy, and then softer and slower because Ray’s mouth was soft and wet and deep, moving sweetly against his, and he wanted never to stop.

Ray reached around Bodie’s neck and took control of the kiss, thrusting in with his tongue and stroking, probing, while Bodie played with the curls at the nape of Ray’s neck. Their hands began to loosen each other’s clothes, find the spots they’d both been staring at. The kiss finally broke and they sought each other’s eyes in the dimness.

“Turn on the lights?” Bodie asked, but Ray said, “Let’s not bother, in here,” took Bodie’s wrist and pulled him into the bedroom. 

Setting each other on fire was the easiest thing in the world. It was unimaginable that fifty years could have changed that.

Back at his flat, in dry clothes, Bodie read Ray's card again, admitting to himself that it was not true, though Ray might have wanted to believe it, and Bodie had desperately insisted it to himself. "He was my North, my South, my East and West," he quoted aloud now, alone at the centre of his personal compass, "My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love could last forever: I was wrong." The card lay in his hand, curved with the firmness of his grip. Since he _was_ alone and no one else would ever know, he kissed Ray's signature and put the card away with his passport and the home copy of his will.

After a working week or so, and a couple of Sunday rests, Bodie scheduled a meeting with Cowley to ask for reassignment. When they met, he got right to his point: “Let me work on Jack Craine’s training team instead of Macklin's or Towser's.”

“Why?” Cowley didn't look stern, though granting the request would rearrange nearly all the training plans even without the changes Bodie was after.

He tried to explain. “I want … training the recruits should be about good judgement, strategy, protection. Protecting each other and the public. Macklin’s wrong. He thinks it’s all hate. He tells us to eliminate the ‘other’—that’s what he calls it. The other. Ray, for me.” He looked sideways at Cowley as he said the name. They’d never outright told him, but Ray had always said Cowley knew. Now the old man showed no surprise, but then he never did.

“I had plenty of hate when I went for King Billy,” Bodie said carefully, “you'll remember,” and Cowley nodded a little. “Kept out my 'other' for sure. When I cared to get test scores, I could do it, but the scenarios showed that I wasn't solving problems well. With my partner, getting to the goal. I didn't realise till later, till recently, that it was a training problem. I can fix it. I'm pretty sure.”

"You're nearly always sure of yourself, 3.7.”

Bodie tried his old confident, smug expression, hoped it looked the way he meant. Those faces had always been easy before.

“Fortunately,” Cowley's voice was very dry, “I am in agreement, this time.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I'll speak to the training team and give you our decision. See Betty and make an appointment for tomorrow, will you?” Cowley clapped Bodie's shoulder. “You're a good lad.”

Telling Claire, at the teashop again—it was now the third or fourth time they'd gone there, so it had begun to feel regular—he repeated, "Cowley called me a good lad," shaking his head.

"Aren't you?" she asked, a glint in her eye.

"Of course! Born on the Sabbath day, wasn't I? Blithe and bonnie and good and gay!" He winked at her.

 She sputtered in her tea.

"He doesn't say so often, is my point."

"Ray always used to say you were Mister Cowley's blue-eyed boy."

"Yes, he did. It's not the only thing he was mistaken about." He reached across the table and she put her hand in his. It was longer than he could remember since he'd held a woman's hand without flirtation, before Claire. "He should have let us know each other, let me have a sister-in-law."

"Here I am now," Claire said. "I could have had _two_ hero brothers at once."

"And no boyfriends at all, with us both vetting them."

She smiled then, and was suddenly like Ray in the way random people had begun to remind him: this man on a queue had shoulders like Ray's, that one running for the bus had a similar stride, that lean young woman crossed her arms the way he did while propping up a wall. Claire's smile was wide and white-toothed and warm, her head tipped back. A pure pleasure to see.

That night, as Bodie glided into that near-sleep when limbs are too heavy to move and noises silence themselves, like a swimmer not yet fully underwater, he felt Ray spooned behind him. A lean arm curved over Bodie's ribs, little puffs of breath feathered across his shoulder, and his back down to his knees was warm. In the morning he remembered.

It wasn't the last time, either. The incidents weren't predictable, and were never twice the same. Once the hand was on the point of his shoulder; another time a leg was hooked over his own. Once curls were tucked at the back of his head. That first sunrise, and other times, he startled awake, took a swift, deep breath and felt his eyes stinging, but as he exhaled, he smiled; every time he smiled.

And lived the day.

**Author's Note:**

> Bodie quotes ["Funeral Blues" by W. H. Auden.](https://allpoetry.com/Funeral-Blues)
> 
> On four separate occasions, I've tried to quit this story. Since I can't, I may be revising it later, even radically. Sorry about that.


End file.
